Learning Optical Flares

Author

Released

10/28/2013

Lens flares are ubiquitous. They're in commercials and promos, TV shows, and feature films. And most of the time, those flares were created with the Optical Flares plugin for After Effects.

Learn how to create your own visual effects with Optical Flares in this course with Chad Perkins. After examining how actual lens flares work in the real world, you'll explore the core features and presets you'll need to create professional lens flares. Chad also gives you a look at integrating these flares with the 3D environments in After Effects, as well as how to create your own custom flares from scratch. Plus, learn how to add animation, obscure flares with layers, dynamically trigger flares, and use them in realistic scenarios like motion graphics, lower thirds, and beauty shots.

This course was brought to you by Chad Perkins. We are honored to host this content in our library.

Topics include:

Adjusting basic flare parameters

Using and adjusting flare presets

Simulating streaks, rings, multi iris effects, and more

Turning natural hot spots in footage into flares

Using After Effects lights as flares

Positioning with masks

Working with dynamic triggering

Skill Level Appropriate for all

2h 37m

Duration

70,580

Views

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- [Voiceover] Hey folks, welcome to this training serieson Optical Flares, by Video Copilot.Optical Flares is a lens flare generating pluginfor Nuke and for Adobe After Effects.Now, although we're going to be using After Effectsfor this training, the effect works similarlyin both applications.Before we get to making beautiful lens flares,we're going to first look at footage of actual lens flares,and spend some time learning a bit about them,so that we know how they work in the real world.Then we'll move on to the basics of Optical Flares.We'll learn how to apply one of the many phenomenallens flares presets that ship with Optical Flaresand how you can get your hands on many more of those.

But from there it's going to get really funbecause we're going to create lens flares from scratch.We'll look at the building blocks of flaresand Optical Flares, streaks, rings,the all-powerful multi-iris and more.We'll even look at a couple different optionsfor simulating the look of a dirty lens.Next, we'll look at a variety of other great features,how to add Flares to hot spots and footageas if they were captured in camera,how to use after effects lights as lens flare controllers,how to automatically add random animation to flareswith flicker and shimmer, using flares in 3D space,using other layers to obscure flares, and much more.

We'll also take a stroll through Wonderland,to help us understand the most powerful featurein Optical Flares, dynamic triggering which allowsyou to set up custom location-based actions for your flares.Finally, we'll end this series by looking at usinglens flares in real world situations.In motion graphics, as elements in lower thirdsand using Optical Flares to add beauty to shots.Honestly folks, Optical Flares is one of the toolsthat I use most often and I think you're gonna reallyhave a lot of fun going through this training,so let's jump in and get started.